Concert Review - Propagandhi, March 23, 2012 - The Burton Cummings Theatre, Winnipeg, Canada

Propagandhi are popular world-wide. For this show, it was originally supposed to someplace else but ended up in the Burton Cummings Theatre. The band actually apologized for the high ticket price ($37 or so), since about $7 from each ticket went to Ticketmaster. They normally charge less for their tickets at other venues.

I now regret having missed the other opening bands. Seven bands played before Propagandhi: Dreadnaut, Seventh Sin, Asado, Kids And Heroes, On This Day, Mortal Ruins, Dangercat. I thought there was no way the first band would take to the stage around 6 pm, so I showed up about 90 minutes later and managed to catch two bands before the headliners. Seventh Sin were pretty good, melodic metal with keyboards, with a fine lead guitarist and a very good singer. They have a CD coming soon. Dreadnaut played next and put their hearts into their performance but weren't quite my thing.

Propagandhi's lead singer Chris Hannah strolled on stage with his bicycle, complete with child seat and parked it near the back. This sort of gave you the idea that he might be trying to send a message about how it's better to not use a fossil-fuel consuming vehicle if you don't have to. Being a very political band, the message, unintended or not, didn't seem like a surprise. Bassist Todd Kowalski ranted about the Mayor by stating that Osbourne House should have received funding from the City. The only surprise for me was that they played for only an hour. The people who I was with said that Kowalski player messed his back up big time and was probably full of painkillers and might not have been able to play longer with his hernia.  He wasn't full of pain killers and if you saw his performance, you would think that he has an amazing chiropractor.